Singing Potatoes
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Friday, 5 September 2003
Imagine

Marion posted a link to a fascinating tale written by her fencing teacher's master's master, an account of his participation in a live-weapon duel against "the excellent fencing critic of the most important Italian newspaper".

Newspapers employed fencing critics? That's just so bizarre and wonderful; I don't know why, but it calls up images of gaslight Victorian thrillers and mysterious gentlemen's clubs with high-backed velvet chairs, snifters of cognac and Meerschaum pipes. Which in turn makes me want to play a game of Call of Cthulhu.

Posted by godfrey (link)
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Comments
What a great job that would've been. When Mike was here Sunday morning he brought over one of the renaissance fighting books, gladitoria something or other. After looking at it, I brought out the Fiore, and compared them, and they were very similar, to the point that some moves were identical. This author might have been one of his students. What was nice was being able to show him how some of the fighting moves worked, considering his skill, knowledge and experience.
Anyway, if only fencing competitions were like those, they'd be much more of a spectator sport, and we might still have fencing critics.

Posted by Lunchbox on 9 Sep 2003 11:18
I think it's high time to put together the League of Extraordinary Fencers, and demonstrate swordplay the way it was done in period, rather than the ridiculous abomination that it's become in the world of sports, or the bastardization practiced in the SCA.

By the way, if you're interested, there's a Yahoo! group dedicated to analyzing of one of the lesser-known English greatsword manuscripts (ADD 39564). The group is fairly dead, but there's a good partial analysis of the manuscript in the Files section.

Posted by Godfrey on 9 Sep 2003 11:52